Minding my own business, knitting or somesuch — my mind definitely elsewhere — I glance up at some noise and give a start.
On our fourth rental session in this house, with these same cushions, there it is: my first sight of this face. Once seen, it’s sort of obvious, no?
As I get the shot, I wonder what kind of face it’s reminding me of: what kind of creature. That sure isn’t obvious.
Maybe it’s one of those animated dragons in the trailers right now. Maybe it’s a Backyardigan, to which I was introduced many years ago by a then-preschool grandson. Maybe it’s not a creature at all: just the right arrangement of features to trigger facial recognition.
And that makes me wonder whether this whole pareidolia thing applies to babies. From early infancy, babies pay more attention to human faces than to other objects — even, it seems, to cartoonish human faces and to line drawings of faces — but I couldn’t find any studies with more stylized shapes.
Cloyingly coy. Bleh.
I’d turn their faces to the couch back.
Barbara – Hey! Not every cushion swirl can be beautiful . . .
I feel a need to step back and disentangle. Do your faces pose an emotional burden? My childhood perceived faces did. I had to spend years growing up and away from some of them to have perfect equanimity when I rediscovered them. Images stored in the right-brain are subject to emotional associations. Human and animal faces must be to be understood in real contexts. I’m not sure where these contrived faces are stored but it is not only with other cartoonish faces or on shelves reserved for children.
Laurna – There now, I’m just pleased when I find one! I hadn’t thought about faces and the brain. I do remember that stage in babies when they don’t recognize a face as a face when it’s upside down above them.
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